The Road Out Of Hell
by X'T'C-Dreamer'13
Summary: This will be a working story from two different points of view as it progresses. A fanfic about the possibility of things not working out the way everyone imagined between Bella & Edward. Revisions to come. Random Mature Content Throughout.
1. Chapter 1: The Slow Ascent

**"_Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light."_**  
– John Milton, _Paradise Lost_

It had been an idyllic romance if one counted near death experiences and a houseful of vampires along with a reservation full of shape shifters and any number of threats coming from all directions romantic. A lot had happened between Edward and me and we had gotten very close, or so I had thought. All the things that had happened had helped to forge what I considered to be an unbreakable bond; something I thought that would last forever. Now I know that forever is only for those fool-hearty enough to believe in it. Forever doesn't come to people like me; mere fragile humans that is.

The romance was done, the engagement was broken and there was still half a year of school to go. How was I supposed to face that … alone? It had been several days since I had seen or heard from Edward. All he had done was leave a note saying that he had to leave and that it would be best for us to go our own ways. He had asked Charlie to have me call him, but I couldn't. Call it cold feet or just pain and anger; I really don't know what it is that I feel now. Every night I cry myself to sleep, if one can call it that. More like my nightly trip to hell.

John Milton wrote, "Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light." From his epic work _Paradise Lost_. I suppose my way out of my own private and very personal hell will definitely be long and hard. It seems that I will never be completely free from that unbreakable bond no matter how much I may wish it now. No matter how difficult things may get, no other will ever hold my heart like Edward Cullen; though that is truly irrelevant at this point, now isn't it? Charlie keeps telling me I should call up Mike Newton or hit on him at the sporting goods store. What my well intended father doesn't understand is that no boy like Mike, Eric or Tyler could ever make me feel the way Edward did. Alas, he means well and I have to appreciate his concerted efforts.

Charlie fears that I will slip back into that deep dark state of depression that I did the first time Edward left. I am depressed and I do feel lost but not like I did last time. I am stronger now. I have to be for a lot of reasons; the most important one is that it will be easier to live without a heart. But I have ask myself am I really as strong as I think I am? Honestly? I don't know. I guess we shall find out soon enough.

* * *

**The attempt to ascend out of hell and towards the light.**

I was late for class and I knew that if I didn't hustle I would get a pink slip and possibly detention. What was the rule, five tardies in a semester and you got detention? I couldn't think about that right now. I had to get to class. I made it just as the last bell rang. Mrs. Trask was closing the classroom door as I slid into the room like a Babe Ruth sliding into home plate. It was a close one, but I was safe, this time. Not even paying the plump Mrs. Trask any mind as my attention was soon wrapped up in those ochre colored eyes, I moved like a specter to my seat in the back of the class. So he had returned; the perfect Mr. Cullen, the infallible Mr. Cullen, the chicken Mr. Cullen.

Taking my seat I didn't dare look at him, but it was impossible not to look at him. I had missed that statuesque build of his in the last several days. I had simply missed everything about him, but as my stomach started acting like a troupe of performers from Cirque du Soleil I laid my head down on my desk. I knew I was going to get sick right there. I couldn't bear to have my entire class witness that, let alone him. Yet I thought I could keep it down if I just laid there not moving or thinking. Then Mrs. Trask announced what play would be studied over the next couple weeks and that was when I knew that there was no way I could hold back my half eaten breakfast of chocolate milk and pop-tarts. As pleased as anyone could be she announced that the class would be reading Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare and that Edward and I would be reading the parts of the Romeo and Juliet.

I couldn't cope with it. Everything just felt like it was falling down on me in that one instant and I had to get some air. Quickly I rushed to the front of the class as if I was on fire and I begged Mrs. Trask to let me leave. Reluctantly she gave me permission to go to the school nurse's office. Without waiting for a hall pass I rushed out of the room and down the hall, but instead of going to the school's nurse, I headed out passed the recreation field and on up to the meadow. It was the one place I knew I would be alone. There was only one other person that knew of the meadow and I knew he wouldn't come up there. Why should he?

So many times after Edward had first left I had tried to find this place and couldn't, but after Laurent had almost attacked me there, I seemed to find it with no problem now. Just as I reached the clearing it started raining a bit harder. 'Just great' I thought to myself what more could happen. Then the tears started falling from my own chocolate colored eyes and then I realized that I wanted to know why he had left, or what I had done. I needed answers that I knew would never be forthcoming. I slumped to the cold wet earth and reclined back against a fallen tree and just huddled into a ball letting the pain wash through me. The lack of understanding and the questions all filled my head making my eyes want to burst forth. I knew that there was no relief to the kind of pain that I was feeling so I just sat there letting the rain hide my own tears as the sky cried, so did I.


	2. Chapter 2: The Devil Inside

"_**Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."**_

_**-**_ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

The rain was coming down harder and I feeling it more now, but my stomach was aching from everything. Why had he come back? In the first days after his leaving the note I thought I never wanted him to return. As each day passed I realized that truly wasn't the case, but I wasn't going to be like I was last time; I couldn't go back to that state of emptiness. My black hole of an existence had nearly been my undoing emotionally and mentally. After surviving what we had survived with the Volturi I believed that nothing would ever separate us, but I had been wrong. Now I lay on the ground curled up wanting to die now that he was back.

My mind wasn't right. He had once called me his own brand of heroin, but I realized that was actually the other way around. Edward was in fact my sweet addiction. They say that beauty hides the greatest evil and though I don't see Edward as evil or as a monster, I know that he is the epitome of the quote by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, "Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love." He was all those things given the right set of circumstances. My Edward was like the devil in disguise; I don't mean devil as in evil, but devil as in the reported beauty that the Morning Star had once been. He was that morning star to me He had been everything to me and so much more.

In the pelting rain I thought I heard that angelic voice that I had once been so attached to, so attuned to. My tears were still falling like the rain but my senses were muted because of my mind trying to protect me from the stress and strain of the situation. My private mind was trying to compartmentalize everything and it was not working very well. Slowly I looked up and there he was. Like the auditory hallucinations I had had the last time he had left me, I was now visualizing him there. Edward had no reason to follow me to the meadow. He didn't love me anymore. I had to be going crazy and yet I had done nothing to try and hear him. Nothing foolish or stupid like before. I had just run from my angelic devil by the name of Edward Cullen.

Dark doe eyes locked on the figment before me as I heard that melodious voice speak out, I "Bella…"/I It was all she heard but it was more than enough to gain her attention. The sound was barely audible to me, but still it was like the most wondrous sound I had heard in ages. Something inside of me wanted to jump up and reach out, but the part that was in control had me locked to the cold wet earth and all that I managed was to say, "Yes, Edward?" My tears were still falling but the rain did a good job of hiding them, thankfully. My eyes locked onto his as I tried to answer him but didn't know what more to say other than what I already had. No matter how he looked, he was still gorgeous to me. There was so much I wanted to say but the words were locked up inside of my heart and for the most part it would do no good. The rain was perhaps not the best reason to be outside at the moment but still it was a very good reason to me. It kept me grounded somehow. I have always hated the cold and the wet, but right now it was my friend as the large pelting raindrops hid s well as masked the fact that I was crying. The weather in the Olympic Peninsula was unpredictable and everyone living here all knew it, but right now I just needed some peace and didn't know how to gain that; no matter how much I wanted it and needed it.

Finally I somehow managed to speak up and asked him in a choked up voice, "What do you want? I have nothing left." The words came out in a squeak more than anything else. I really hated this. Only Edward could get me this worked up and though I could never really hate him, I did hate the fact that he held that kind of power over me in that instant. It was unfair and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. The hard thing was the fact that all I really wanted was for him to just wrap his arms around me and tell me it would be alright, but again I knew that wasn't happening. So I remained glued wet and cold to my spot on the damp ground where I had settled earlier. Looking up at Edward was almost painful as it was a blessing. Maybe I was the masochistic one instead of him. He didn't want me or so his note had claim and I had swore to myself that I would let him go and yet here he was and I wanted him here.

Was I a greater fool this time around, or was I just plain stupid and fool hearted? Either way he was here and I didn't want him leaving. Had I grown that desperate? I didn't want to think so but the evidence was speaking to the contrary. Edward had been my life and probably always would be. No matter what Jacob did or said, he would never light the fires in my heart the way Edward could. Jacob was my best friend and had done a lot for me when Edward had left the first time, but this time around there would be no recovering or no coming back from the edge. If I fell over this time, everything would be lost and I would let it go.

He didn't move for the longest time and I finally stared up at him and asked, "Are you going to stand there all damn day or are you going to tell me why you followed me up here?" My words came out a bit harsher than I intended, but right now I couldn't think straight enough to censor them the proper way. I wasn't trying to hurt Edward; I just needed him to do or say what he needed to and just give me some peace. He wanted me out of his life and so be it. I got the message. When he was not immediately forth coming with anything, I lay my head on my knees and just began to cry harder now not caring that he heard me. He had always hated me crying, but I couldn't help it. This was the first time I had really let go of myself since Charlie gave me Edward's note. Perhaps this was the catharsis I needed to start healing. I really didn't know. I just had so many questions and no answers. It was like starting over, but I wouldn't beg him, not this time, no matter if that was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world.


	3. Chapter 3: The Winding Road Back

_**"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear."**_

_**-John Lennon  
**_

It was a very strange thing for me in that moment as I sat there drawn up in to an almost fetal like position. Though I was resigned to my own pain and loneliness, I could feel that of Edward's as well. The thing that had confused me the most was why he had broken our engagement and then just left with nothing more than a note. That wasn't like Edward, but perhaps whatever had pushed him to feel he needed to leave again had caused him some kind of pain as well. Perhaps that force had left him emotionally void as it had me. It wasn't so much that I was emotionally void; I was just void; period. Without Edward I felt as if I had nothing left to live for. No other person, not even my parents, had ever touched me on the level that Edward did. It was as if we had developed a symbiotic relationship and each of us needed the other for our own specific reasons just to survive; least that was how it had been for me. Now that things were so dramatically different, I didn't know if I knew Edward any longer and that scared me.

Finally I managed to get a hold of myself and look up at him. Even sitting next to me he was still taller than me by almost a foot, but while I had been falling apart he had moved next to me and was sitting on the ground only inches away from me. My dark eyes locked on to him once more as I stretched my numb limbs. The rain and cold had soaked all my clothes and I was shivering from the dampness but I really didn't care. The only thing that mattered to me now was that Edward was there. The silence between us was deafening. It was almost tangible and I hated it. Where there once had been a natural order of ease between us now there was uncertainty and emptiness. Somehow in Edward's leaving this time he had managed to cause that unbreakable bond to become severely weakened and because of that I imagined that he and I both were feeling like we were drifting a bit aimlessly. I know I hated that feeling, and I could only imagine how it made him feel.

Without a word he used the pads of his thumbs to wipe my tears away very gently as ever, but he offered me that trademark half smile that I so loved about him and finally said. "Bella, I don't really know where to start. Things changed. Things happened. I can't even tell you why they did. I felt stupid for what I did and right now, I feel like I should beg before you, but I don't even feel worthy enough to do that." Reluctantly, almost nervous like, he reached around me and wrapped me in his cold embrace. It made me shiver more but it was comforting. I looked at him in utter confusion and heartbreak and asked, "Ed? Why didn't you just tell me what I was doing wrong?" If vampires could cry I really believe that Edward would have been crying in that moment. His eyes grew dark and he closed them as I watched. He took in an unneeded breath and then opened his eyes and gazed back down at me and he then let out that breath as if he had forgotten that he had been holding it. My eyes settled on to his once more and I did start crying again. My head went to his chest and he just drew me closer. It felt good, even if I knew it was only going to be temporary.

Edward's cold finger from his free hand found itself beneath my chin and carefully he nudged me to look upwards and I did. With that pleading look in his dark eyes he said to me, "Bella, please don't cry." I wanted to stop for no other reason than to give absolve him of the guilt I knew he must be feeling, and yet, I still didn't know what had caused it, but the tears kept coming and between racking sobs I managed to stutter out an almost comprehensible statement, "Ed, I'm … I'm … sorry. I'll try … but … it's hard. I still don't know … don't …. understand what I did wrong." Something in him changed in that instant. We had kissed a few times before, but he had always been gentle with me but not this time. He pulled me up into his lap and drew my face to his and he kissed me with a passion that only soul mates can recognize in one another. That kiss touched me as nothing else ever had. This was my Edward, this was the man I had fallen in love with; this was my everything holding me as he used to before everything had started its long trek into hell.

Dark eyes met chocolate ones and then he finally broke the kiss as he traced my facial features as if I were a porcelain doll and he spoke, "Bella, my one true heart, you never did anything wrong. You couldn't do anything wrong. You did everything right. I was foolish and was mislead by my own thoughtlessness. It's a long story that I will try to explain in time, but just suffice it to say, that I went after something that I thought wanted and learned that it was nothing more than a pipe dream. I don't even know that I can ask you to forgive me. I know what I did was awful, but I hope someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me and know that I will ever regret doing what I did to you." As I gazed up at Edward I listened to his words and knew that he spoke the truth, but I didn't know what I could accept so quickly. As I had said to him once before; his changeability was going to give me whiplash, and that I didn't like.

This time I was different and stronger. Yes, I needed and more so wanted Ed in my life, but I didn't know if I could survive another lapse from him. I know that he loves me, but I still felt like I was perhaps doing something wrong that might be driving him away. My own self-doubts were eating at me and I just needed to understand myself better before I could give him absolution from this recent ordeal between us. Besides he had not even said that he wanted us to get back together, so I knew I had to keep my wits about me and my feet on the ground before I started thinking things that might not be laid out in the cards. If I wasn't careful my heart would be like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon Float ready to take flight. No, this time I had to remain thoughtful and certain of what I really wanted and needed between Edward and myself. My left hand went to his face and caressed the cold hard smoothness of his cheek and I whispered to him, "Edward, you know I love you, or least I hope you do, but this time there was such a hole left that I don't know that I can just plug it back up and then merrily go on my way. I don't even know what you want for us now. Hell, I don't even know that you want there to be an us. I may just be playing here on wishful thinking or daydreams. I think we both have to do some soul searching and determine what it is that we both really want; be it with one another or not."

I sighed and had never really stopped crying, not fully anyway, but I did manage to regain some sense of understanding and equilibrium on the matter. "I have more questions than answers and I would hope that you will eventually open up and tell me what was going on and why you thought you had to leave me. You say that I didn't do anything wrong and yet you still left. Edward, I have to know, please tell me what was going on. Don't you think I at least deserve that?" I couldn't piece it together and it had bugged the shit out of me at the time. I really needed some answered and Edward was the only one that could provide them. So for now I just sat in his lap with his arms curled around me waiting and hoping that I would get some, of any kind.


	4. Chapter 4: Crossroads

"_**There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them."**_

-Denis Waitley

As if suddenly realizing that I was soaked through and through, Edward moved in that supernatural way of his as he carried me to a place where he and I had talked on many occasions when sudden showers would hit us unexpectedly. There was an indention in the surface rocks that wasn't really deep enough to be called a cave, but deeper than just an outcropping of rock that had often sheltered us from the heavy rains when we first started talking to one another after I told Edward that I knew what he was. From then on, it was as if this meadow was ours and every place in it was special in one way or another. This particular place was large enough for the two of us to comfortably sit inside and watch the rain fall outside. It was here that our conversation continued.

Once Edward had put me down and then took up the space next to me he looked at me and shook his head. "Bella you're soaked. You could get sick and then where will you be? Charlie will get upset and with good reason."

I cut him off as he was about to continue, "Edward, I'm healthy as a horse and I rarely get sick, but thank you for your worries. Charlie would just carry me to see old Doc Grundy if I do so don't worry about it, okay? I'll be fine."

"But Bella…" he was about to start again.

"Edward, let it go. I'm not your concern anymore." Then I saw the pain in his eyes. I hadn't intended for it to sound as it had I guess, but it was true. I wasn't his concern any longer. He had chose to leave and though we were talking about things he had still never said that he intended for us to get back together and like I had thought earlier, there was no way I was going to beg. Bella Swan was tired of making a fool of herself for the smart cool boy that wasn't interested. Yet, I had to admit, I was still intently curious as to just why he had left me in the first place. Looking at him I put the question to him directly so there would be no more misunderstandings or vague innuendo about it. "Edward, why did you have to leave this time? You said you had your reasons, and that you didn't want me to dwell on them and that you believed that they were accurate. You also said you hoped that I wouldn't hate you."

His eyes were locked on me as I spoke to him, but with every precise repeated word from his letter I saw him almost physically flinch. I didn't mean to hurt him by asking, but I had to know. There had been some reason why he had followed me and he would either tell me or keep it to himself. There would be no hope of us moving forward in any aspect if he didn't fess up on some level and he knew I meant that.

Edward looked at me once more and with a heavy sigh he ran his hand through his now rain slicked long hair. I wasn't used to seeing it like that, well, long anyway. As I was about to say something he took my hands into his cold ones and then spoke, "You know, like I said, I really don't know where to begin. You will probably hate me regardless of what my reasons are or rather were, and Bella I can't tell you where I want things to go. I'm confused now more than I ever was before. I just know that I can't live without you." That odd expression that I recognized all too well crossed his features and then it started making sense to me.

Again before I could say something stupid he forged onward but this time with an almost eerie sounding laugh. There was definitely no real humor in it though. "Bella as much as I hate to admit it, I fully and honestly know now how you felt about Jacob. You once told me that though you were just friends and that you loved me, you loved him too and really couldn't be happy without him in your life. Well, you see, there is someone else in my life that I feel the same way about, but right now, I'm not sure who I love more in the romantic sense. Yes, Bella, when I left, I thought there was someone else that I loved as much as you, maybe more." There was a long pause as he turned his head away and then finished, "Now, I just don't know…"

He looked at me with a certain fear in his eyes that I had never known Edward Cullen to possess. Fear and Edward were not synonymous. It was rather a disheartening sight that stirred a very real feeling within me. A feeling that also left me yet with still more questions than answers. Drawing one of my hands from his I cupped his cheek and then brushed a stray wet lock from his brow and said, "You love someone else?" The word 'who' tried to form on my lips and no matter how many times my brain fired that particular question my mouth would not or could not utter the one syllable in order to ask. "What happened, Ed?" If he was uncertain now, something must have happened and I wanted, no needed, to know what that was. I didn't want to be second fiddle, but too I wanted to understand. In many ways I already did, but in my case, I had never really loved Jacob like Edward apparently loves this other person. That was the distinct difference, least I thought it was.


End file.
